End of the World

            I’m not going to write a blog this week because Cthulhu destroyed the world yesterday.

            ... Okay, fine, I’ll write one, but only because the previous sentence needs some explanation (we don’t want another War of the Worlds incident, after all).

Yesterday, Colleen, some friends, and I were playing an excellent board game called Eldritch Horror. Someone who is not a fan of the horror genre (such as me) might think that a game with that title might not be their cup of tea, but they are quite likely wrong. It is one of the best board games I’ve ever played.

            The game is set just after the First World War, and the players are a co-operative team traveling around the world trying to save the world from H.P. Lovecraft type monsters. They travel to cities, collecting items and spells while trying to close portals to other dimensions and fighting the monsters that keep coming in through those portals. All the while more portals keep opening, bad things keep happening across the world, and the doom counter keeps going down. If the doom counter reaches zero, a cataclysmic event happens (which is different each game, depending on the Great Old One who is trying to break through). The only way to prevent the cataclysmic event is to solve three “mysteries” which allow the players to save the world.

            In this instance, we were going up against Cthulhu. And, as you may have guessed, out doom counter reached zero.

            We put up a valiant fight, though! In fact, we were so close to winning, it was a heartbreaking loss. We solved the third and final clue on the exact same turn that our doom counter reached zero, releasing Cthulhu into the world. If the order in which event occurred had differed just a little... but they didn’t.

            Surprisingly, this is actually what I like so much about the game – it is a challenge. At any moment in the game, your team is on the brink of failure. It makes the game exciting, and forces you to be both careful and reckless at the same time. My character actually went insane close to the end (putting that investigator out of the game and making me bring in a new one), but even as I went down I saved two others from the same fate as a last hurrah. It was glorious.

            If you ever get the chance, I highly advise trying out Eldritch Horror. Who knows? You may win. Or Cthulhu could destroy the world, giving you a perfect excuse to not write your weekly blog.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

DM for a Cure

            Coming up on May 13th, I get to be part of a wonderful event. A twelve. Hour. Dungeons and Dragons. Marathon. That’s right: twelve hours straight of Dungeons and Dragons – and not just for the sake of doing it (although that’s a good enough reason), but to raise money for the fight against cystic fibrosis. It is going to be glorious (and exhausting).

            How did I get involved? Well, the DM of my weekly D&D game at my local board game cafe has a daughter with cystic fibrosis. He mentioned he was planning this event, along with the cafe, and was working on organising the DMs to get it to happen. Knowing that I’m terrible at fundraising (what do you mean, I have to leave the house and talk to people?), I immediately volunteered to be a DM.

            As I learned more about the event, I also discovered there were going to be prizes. Well, I thought, just about anyone interested in D&D will have an appreciation of chainmaille. So I donated some dice bags, a couple dragons, and an armoured teddy-bear. Meanwhile, Colleen signed up as a player and will be raising as much money as she can (the players get more in-game benefits the more they raise). We’re committed to doing our part to fight cystic fibrosis.

            At first I was a bit concerned about how much interest there would be in the event – I mean, it’s a long day, lots of fundraising, and not everyone can make the time for such things even if they are interested. We had four Dungeon Masters, which meant we had room for 24 players – that’s a lot of seats to fill. Then registration opened on April 5th. I needn’t have worried. By the time Colleen and arrived at the cafe for our weekly D&D (6:30pm), over half the spots were already filled. By the third day of registration, every seat was filled. Three days.

            Now I’m just getting more excited as the day grows closer. Not only will this be a fun game to run, but I’m eager to see how much money our efforts raise. And now, you can look forward to it, too, because it will give me a great story to share with you.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Death Slime

            This is the story of how I (may have) gotten my entire Dungeons and Dragons party killed in two sessions. It’s a bit of a cliff-hanger, as I won’t know the actual end result until the game session next Wednesday, but the journey is more important than the ending.

            A new campaign recently started at our local board game cafe and Colleen and I were probably the first to sign up for it. The setting for the game is called Primeval Thule – it’s a world that mixes a Cohen the Barbarian type environment with H.P. Lovecraft elements like Cthulhu. That alone should have told me that this campaign would be more intense than any game I’ve played before.

            It started out with our group of adventurers being sent on a mission to an ancient dungeon (surprise, surprise) to find a specific gem. During the first session, we arrived at the location only to find it crawling with zombie-like creatures being controlled by strange plants. It was a tough battle, but we made it through with only one near-fatality – my character (also the only healer in the group), who was almost turned into one of the plant-zombies.

            My character was saved just in time, but not before receiving severe brain damage (caused by vines). Our group then rested and healed up, and that was the end of our first session.

            When we continued on last Wednesday, we delved down into the ruins. While my character’s brain injuries would slowly heal, for now my intelligence points were well below what is generally considered the minimum for a character being able to speak properly. So, I decided I had to play it properly.

            While the rest of my group carefully explored the ruins, mine started ambling around aimlessly. My character was eventually tied to another with a length of rope in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Well... it worked for a while – right up until everyone else was distracted and my character wandered straight into a trap, getting covered with a clinging acid.

            My character was (barely) saved, but in the process another character was severely injured and I used up all of my healing spells. That’s why, when a spider dropped on Colleen’s character and knocked her unconscious and paralyzed her with poison, there was no way to heal her.

            Now, if our group had decided to take a rest at this point, allowing the poison to wear off Colleen’s character and for her (and a couple other injured characters) to heal a little, things may have gone slightly differently. But the group had just solved a riddle that had opened a secret door somewhere and, in our eagerness to find it, we ran straight into a group of animated skeletons.

            Now, to start with, there were eight of them and six of us. We had one person down and three injured (two severely injured). Our tough barbarian (injured from saving my character) charged right into battle while everyone else fought from a distance. He went down, but not before taking half of the skeletons with him.

            One by one, each of my companions fell to the skeletons (unconscious and with a chance of dying – it would take too long to explain the game mechanics) save for my character and one other – and that’s where the session ended. My character fighting one uninjured skeleton, and a companion fighting two (one uninjured, one almost dead). If either of our characters gets hit one more time, they’ll be down.

            And I can’t help thinking how much differently this battle would have gone if my character hadn’t stupidly wandered into that trap. Some healing spells would have saved us all.

            Yet, at the same time, it was the most intense and fun night of D&D I’ve ever had – and that’s saying something. Who knew that having your character mess everything else up for the entire group could be so fun?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Wind and Electricity

            Autumn isn’t messing around this year, at least not where I live. We had mostly nice weather and then WHAM! October first, the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. It’s not often the weather actually does what we’d expect it to do based on the calendar.

            Of course with such high winds there’s one thing you have to expect if you live out in the country like we do: power failure. The power was out for around three hours. It was during this time that I noticed (as I always do when such things happen) just how much we rely on electricity these days. The power goes out and we sort of flounder. I mean, what can you even do without electricity?

            Almost everything I do, in one way or another, relies on electricity. Even when the power goes out, what I find to do still uses electronics. I write on my laptop, read on my Kindle. I listen to music or play games on various devices. Sure, I have other options – board games, books, making chainmaille and such, yet even with those there’s an element of electricity to provide enough light or get background music.

            To think that electricity didn’t even exist (well, hadn’t been discovered) a few hundred years ago is astounding. A handful of generations later and our lives fall apart without it.

            It really makes you stop and think about the new technology we have coming out now and how long it will be before future generations are completely dependent on it.

            How long after that will all of what we know be gone?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Best Board Game Everrrrrer

            No, seriously, if you haven’t played this board game, you need to. It is Firefly The Game and it’s loads of fun.

            What is it like, you ask? Well, I can best describe it as a combination of Monopoly, Settlers of Catan and Dungeons & Dragons. Incidentally, if you haven’t played those either, you’re missing out. Except maybe Monopoly, that can be hit or miss.

            Anyway, even if you aren’t a fan of Firefly (which, if you’re not, it probably means you haven’t watched the show, a problem you should go fix right now), the game is great – although you miss many of the references. It has a simple concept – you are the captain of a Firefly class starship. You need to find a crew, find a job and keep flying.

            Throughout the game, you fly around between planets doing jobs, hiring crew members and upgrading your ship while working towards certain goals. You get to choose the jobs from various contacts and the work is either legal or illegal, moral or immoral, with some paying better and some being riskier (with the potential of getting issued arrest warrants or even having crew members killed). The jobs can vary from carting cargo and passengers between planets to robbing banks.

            As for the goals to win the game, they change! That’s the best part about the game – there are different story modes to play. There’s even a solo mode (which I had so much fun with I played for 5 hours straight one day). The different game stories change the strategies needed for playing and make for a fresh game each time. I figure you can even write your own game modes for it (I’m planning a fantastic co-operative story).

            The only downside is that it does take a while to set up – but it’s worth it. It’s also one of those games where the rules seem really complicated when they’re being explained, but they begin to make sense really fast as you’re playing.

            So, yes. Firefly. Play it.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.